Edit: It's VERY worthwhile getting W7, in my opinion anyway. I'm an MSDN subscriber 9MS Gold partner) and used Vista when it was released to subscribers in the November (retail was January). Likewise, I've used W7 RC since last Friday. Basically, I'm a very heavy user, all for business tasks and VMs, and W7 is MUCh faster than Vista. At least for the x64 version, on a laptop (4GB) and desktop (8GB).